Consensus Candidate Cannot Defeat Tinubu, He Inherits Buhari’s 12 Million Votes – Okechukwu to ADC

A founding member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Osita Okechukwu, has dismissed claims by the African Democratic Congress (ADC) that a national consensus is building to unseat President Bola Tinubu in the 2027 general elections.

Speaking on Sunday while briefing members of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) at Eke, Enugu State, Osita Okechukwu stated that the CPC faction remains fully committed to supporting Tinubu’s re-election bid and will deliver a significant portion of the late President Muhammadu Buhari’s 12 million vote bank to him.

He emphasized that the real national consensus is the rotation of the presidency between the North and South — a principle established at the beginning of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic in 1999 to ensure equity, justice, and fairness.

“The truism is that the majority of Nigerians, both partisan and non-partisan, adopted the national consensus that the presidency should rotate between the South and North,” Okechukwu said.

Responding to the ADC’s assertion about a plan to unseat Tinubu, Okechukwu dismissed the party’s leadership as “Internal Displaced Politicians (IDPs)” — former members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who he claims destabilized their former party and are now engaging in desperate power grabs.

“These IDPs are now trying to rewrite the rules by undermining the rotation convention. They are the ones who breached it in 2023 and are now blaming President Tinubu for their self-inflicted errors,” he stated.

He questioned whether Tinubu had directed the PDP to ignore its own zoning arrangement, as enshrined in Section 7 of its constitution, during the 2023 elections, noting that even respected PDP leaders recently reaffirmed support for zoning the presidency to the South.

Okechukwu accused ADC members of engaging in a “blame game” while ignoring the importance of the rotation principle, which he described as a “glue that holds Nigeria’s polarized society together.”

“Instead of embracing this pragmatic model, they are attempting to bury a convention that has held our country together for decades,” he said.

Okechukwu also criticized the ADC’s belief that it can win support in the North, warning that northern voters are far too politically sophisticated to be manipulated.

“The ADC seems to think northern voters can be picked like items in a dormitory — that’s a mirage. The northern electorate is one of the most sophisticated in our dear country,” he said.

Reaffirming his stance, Okechukwu insisted that President Tinubu remains politically strong going into 2027, with backing from key structures and legacy votes associated with former President Buhari.